02/02/2011

Social conservatives are forever telling us that all discussions pertaining to sexuality and marriage and family should take place at home, and that a parents' values are the most important component in raising responsible children. But what happens when kids raised under undeniably firm conservative credentials still end up on the side of LGBT equality? How do the "values" conservatives spin it then?

This from Focus on the Family's Jenny Tyree:

It’s not really a surprise that Bush, like Meghan McCain, disagrees with her father about marriage. It’s rather easy for 20-somethings—or millennials–to jump on the very tidy-looking “rights” bandwagon that proponents of same-sex marriage have made marriage to be.

It’s not entirely the fault of millennials that the purpose of marriage is lost on them. Bush, McCain and their peers grew up breathing air thick with a cultural disregard for marriage. Experiencing the personal benefit of having a married mom and dad doesn’t change what they witnessed–willful divorces and the suffering of the children of divorce. The result is a generational embrace of sex as a right and marriage as one of many lifestyles, rather than as the best family structure for children and a stabilizing force for society.It Would Really be News if Barbara Bush Supported Marriage [Focus on the Family]

So basically, Jenny's saying that young'uns like Bush and McCain don't have a Falwell's chance in the modern-day "protect marriage" game, because they happened to have been born after 1978. That darn Bill Clinton. And "Melrose Place." And grunge music. And that Ellen -- oh, that Ellen!

But if this is true, then Jenny and Focus on the Family should just stop right now. Because let's get real: If *ANY* Gen X/Gen Yer should've heard the "protect marriage" message, it's these two. Bush, especially. Heck, her pop was on international television telling America that they *MUST* ban gays in the *FEDERAL* constitution so as to avoid "weakening the good influence of society." Now, I know that's not something most of us can directly relate to, per se. But something tells me that the younger Bush at least had a passing familiarity with the words her own father (i.e. the then-most powerful man in the world) spilled before the broadcast cameras. It doesn't seem like the kind of thing a kid could just ignore, as if it were a toothless call to stop sliding ding the solarium's banister or a boring story about a co-worker coming this close to hitting the button with a Nerf football and almost setting off nuclear war. So if this particular parent - Focus on the Family's super start president -- lacks the ability to pass on the "protect marriage," "pro-family" code-wording to his own flesh and blood, doesn't that put a SERIOUS dent in Focus on the Family's own work and tired arguments?

Jenny goes on to write:

Unfortunately, support for same-sex marriage by millennials exhibits a misplaced compassion that could lead to more children separated from what they most need—a married mom and dad. In their eagerness to champion a cause and the underdog, millennials are supporting the loudest voices—those of adults demanding a right to redefine marriage for everyone.

The real tragedy will occur if marriage redefiners and their well-intended champions are successful. A redefinition of marriage would result in more children missing the financial, physical, scholastic, emotional and relational benefits of growing up with a married mom and dad.It Would Really be News if Barbara Bush Supported Marriage [Focus on the Family]

So more blame of birth order, coupled with the offensive idea that modern generations are supportive of basic human fairness and a more fuller recognition of our human community simply because they want some hip cause to support. Not a surprise. Focus on the Family always has to have a scapegoat, so as to avoid the deserved scrutiny that belongs on their decades of flawed, flailing, discriminatory messaging.

But it's not only offensive to the younger generations -- it's also highly offensive to the Bushes and McCains. Because again, while FoTF traffics in "protect marriage" rhetoric, they always position an intact, two-parent, mom/dad-headed family as the key way to steward good values. George and Laura Bush had that kind of family. John and Cindy McCain gave that kind of family to Meghan. And both families did so while speaking the values of conservatism. Yet both daughters of anti-marriage-equality fathers still came to an adult place of support for the "financial, physical, scholastic, emotional and relational benefits" that flow through a culture of equality. Both daughters look to their own family stability and presumably now wish to embolden the American family through an inclusive system wherein no gay child is left behind.

Why must Focus on the Family reject these Bush and McCain family values?